


A Pseudonym Is Just Another Word For A Secret Identity

by pertainstothesea



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: AU where I forget when which characters move into the haus, AU where they have an LGBTQ+ themed book club, Everyone is Secretly an Author au, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-20 03:43:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22075678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pertainstothesea/pseuds/pertainstothesea
Summary: Every single person in the Haus is secretly a published author.Every single person in the Haus is absolutely determined to not let any of their friends learn about this.The problem is, Holster, Ransom, and Bitty decide to start "Queer Bro Book Club," and end up reading every single person in the Haus's books.Chaos, secret identities, and poorly told lies- what more do you want here?
Relationships: Adam "Holster" Birkholtz & Eric "Bitty" Bittle & Justin "Ransom" Oluransi, Adam "Holster" Birkholtz/Justin "Ransom" Oluransi, Chris "Chowder" Chow & Derek "Nursey" Nurse & William "Dex" Poindexter, Derek "Nursey" Nurse & William "Dex" Poindexter, Eric "Bitty" Bittle/Jack Zimmermann, Jack Zimmermann & Samwell Men's Hockey Team, Will update as I go - Relationship
Comments: 379
Kudos: 426





	1. Jack

**Author's Note:**

> Okay I've already written Nursey as a secret author, check it out here if you haven't yet: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9960677/chapters/22277021 
> 
> I'm not sure whether to make this one an official sequel or not tbh, but maybe?

Jack walked into the Haus kitchen and an argument.

“Pierre Laurent is a way better author than Rick Phelps, Holster. Come on, he’s got a whole section on sources in the back of the book! It’s gay historical romance with _citations_ ,” Bitty said. He thudded his rolling pin on the counter to emphasize his points. “Phelps writes fun enough things, sure, but he doesn’t know shit about accuracy unless it’s the measurements in a muffin recipe. That’s why he sets everything in the here and now.”

“Fuck history,” Holster countered. “Phelps can write believable sexual tension.”

Bitty turned red. “Well–”

Jack’s pulse was racing. He had to end this conversation immediately before he blurted out something dumb.

“Is there pie yet?” he asked, opening the fridge forcefully. The condiments in the door clattered loudly enough to make Holster pause.

“Not yet,” Bittle said.

“Zimmermann, have you read anything by Rick Phelps or Pierre Laurent? Back me up here,” Holster pleaded. “Laurent’s good at like, telling you how many buttons were on uniforms, but his characters have like zero chemistry.”

“Haven’t read either,” Jack lied. Bitty lit up.

“I’ve got an extra copy of Laurent’s latest! I’ll give it to you, and you can settle the argument for us.”

“Even a hockey robot can see that there’s no spark,” Holster insisted.

“Even a loudmouth with no sense of subtlety knows that’s a surefire way to make me never bake any of the recipes in this book,” Bitty snapped.

“Bitty, no!” Ransom cried, finally looking up. “I tried to make those butterscotch cookies already and I fucked them up.”

“Will you promise not to share cookies with people who have dumb opinions about the books we’re reading?” Bitty demanded. Ransom looked more conflicted than Jack had ever seen him.

“Bro… Bro, just rethink the book thing. For the sake of the cookies,” Ransom said, turning to Holster. “They sound so fucking good, bro.”

“Fine, I’ll drop it. For now. For the cookies,” Holster conceded with a frown.

The people at rehab had encouraged him to have something to do besides hockey. Something equally challenging, gripping, exciting. So he wrote the book. And he liked it. He liked ordering the reference books from his library to research different places and times. He liked sitting down with a pile of printed out copies of old letters and a highlighter and finding the things the books didn’t talk about. He liked putting together an outline of scenes and making up people to put in those scenes. He even liked taking words and putting them down on the blank page one after the other until every scene was checked off the outline.

He didn’t like the idea of his book being marketed as something he, Jack Zimmermann, did, though. Bad Bob’s fuckup son wrote a book in rehab, buy it just to satisfy your morbid curiosity! Not to mention the whole “why is Bad Bob’s fuckup son writing soldiers kissing” thing. No. He had enough to deal with without that. So he submitted it to an agent under the conditions that 1) he would not use his name 2) he would not do promotion. No tweeting, no book tours- nothing. So Pierre Laurent and a few historical novels were born. He thought they were pretty good. Goodreads seemed to agree. Though he didn’t read the comments. He promised his parents and his therapist that he’d never read the comments.He was working on the third book in the trilogy now. 

Bitty knocked on his door that night after dinner, holding a copy of Jack’s first book tenderly. Jack tried to subtly shove his desk chair in front of where a full set of advance review copies sat on his bookshelf. Luckily, Bitty was still looking at the cover, where a general with a strong jaw stood staring out over a forest from the top of a mountain. It didn’t have much to do with the story, but it looked nice, and Jack trusted the publisher to know how the books should look.

“Here’s that book.” He set it down on Jack’s nightstand gently. “Holster is wrong, full stop. He just wouldn’t know subtlety if it hit him in the face.”

“Yeah?” Jack asked. He’d decided that shorter sentences were better here.

“He wants everything to be obvious! And it isn’t, not in real life,” Bitty said, arguing like Holster was there. “And I know it’s apples and oranges, well, apples and chickens, they’re so different, but we’re reading them both in Queer Bro Book Club and I just want someone else to see what I love about this book.”

“Holster seemed to like the other one more.”

“Holster thinks that one has more realistic chemistry because everyone involved knows that they’re flirting,” Bitty explained. “But in real life, maybe it’s more realistic for someone to be in love with someone who might never return their feelings and never talks about it!” He fell silent. Jack didn’t really know what to say to that, so he tried to turn it back to the books.

“It doesn’t look like a book with a lot of romance,” Jack said carefully.

“Well there’s a lot more war, and I’m not gonna lie to you, that’s pretty boring. Lots of gross sounding battlefields and stuff. Not a whole lot on how they eat, which you think he’d talk about since lord knows _we_ need to eat a whole ton and _we_ just play hockey and go to school, we’re not under that kind of life or death stress…” Jack tuned out for a second while Bittle rambled, focusing a little too hard on his lips. He snapped back to attention as Bittle’s tone changed.

“And so _he’s_ in love with his commanding officer, and the commanding officer seems to have no idea, but he kind of does? It’s not until like the last three chapters that anything happens. Anyways. It’s gay and it’s great.” Bitty sighed a little. “And the Rick Phelps books are good, but they aren’t great. They’re fluffy, which is nice sometimes, but there isn’t enough substance to take ’em seriously.”

“Fluffy things are good sometimes, though,” Jack said. “Your spicy pumpkin drinks are fluffy, right?” Bitty huffed and rolled his eyes like Jack was being serious.

“Lord. Mr. One Milk, No Sugar speaking out in defense of the PSL, what’s next?” he asked.

“Where’s the other book?” Jack asked. Bitty stopped talking about lattes suddenly.

“Oh, I don’t think–”

“I can’t weigh in on the great debate if I don’t read both,” he pointed out. Bitty was frozen for a second.

“Look, I’m not going to try to steal your secret book club handshake if that’s what you’re worried about,” Jack said.

“I just don’t think you’ll like it,” Bitty said. “Lots of protein-free meals. No hockey. No history. Just murder and cookies and flirting.”

“I like cookies and flirting,” Jack protested. Bitty looked skeptical, but Jack kept talking. “And I’m reading the war book, isn’t war just a lot of murder?”

Bitty frowned. He looked really cute like that, the middle of his forehead wrinkling together. It would be a really good place to kiss– 

Jack really needed to think more captainlike thoughts. Good captains do not think about kissing their teammates on the forehead and then dropping down into a really slow French kiss–

Good captains just thought about the books they were going to read so they could be in touch with what was taking up their team’s time outside of practice. Yes. The book. The book that he was going to read to settle his team’s disagreement. Very captain-like, that kind of thing.

“I’ll grab it,” Bitty finally said, unable to find an argument. “But you can just stop reading whenever you get bored with it.”

“I’m not a quitter, Bittle,” Jack said with a grin. Bitty rolled his eyes.


	2. Bitty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack seriously wants to read Bitty's book? Bitty's book, the murder mystery with a dash of romance and a recipe at the end of every chapter??

Bitty was still stewing from the book talk with Holster. Sure, it was impossible for him to be impartial about his own writing, but he knew when someone else was good at writing! And Pierre Laurent wrote good books about characters that Bitty might have a crush on! Okay, maybe he wasn’t totally objective, but he didn’t have to be.

It was weird to compare the books at all, but he, Holster, and Ransom had started Queer Bro Book Club that semester. The only rules were that the books had to have some LGBTQ+ characters or subject matter, and that they couldn’t be the same genre as the last one. Bitty had picked Laurent (historical fiction), Holster had picked Phelps (cozy mystery), and Ransom was still trying to find the right book for the next month.

He’d about had a heart attack when Holster sent him a link to buy his first book for the book club.

Rick Phelps. Middle name, mother’s maiden name. It wasn’t that original, but it was working. His genre was generally called “cozy mysteries,” which sometimes felt a little dismissive but usually just felt nice. His stories were there to make people feel happy, maybe try out a recipe or two, and not think that hard about the murders that happened in the first chapter. It was way more important for most readers to figure out whether the plucky baker who occasionally solved mysteries would fall for the handsome detective who kept telling him “Joe, stay safe and stop investigating!” or the equally handsome friend from childhood who just moved back to town and kept saying “Joe, I’ll help you investigate!” The point was that Joe would solve the mystery, flirt with both love interests, and bake forever. He included a recipe at the end of every chapter, tested until they were foolproof, and frankly he thought half his readers were buying the books for the recipes alone.

That wouldn’t be a bad thing, of course– the butterscotch oatmeal recipe from his second book was worth the price of a hardcover alone. His mama complained to him every day for a week when she caught one of the other church ladies trying to pass it off as her own recipe.

He’d just about had a double heart attack when Jack asked to read his book, too.

It’s one thing to have your nosiest friends read your secret baking books. Frankly, after the comprehensive _Find Bittle’s Ideal Man_ spreadsheet, he had expected Ransom or Holster to look up from Chapter Six and demand the truth. Bradley, the handsome childhood friend, was tall and dark-haired and had great cheekbones and an even better ass. And Bitty knew he’d drunkenly talked about how much he liked good shoulders and a man who was tall but not _too_ tall, because guys who were _too_ tall were tough to kiss without getting out a damn step stool, the same attributes Joe admired on Drew, the handsome detective.

Anyways, the point is, it’s one thing to have your friends read about your ideal man, it’s another thing to have your secret crush read your secret baking books. Even if it had been years before Bitty met Jack when he started writing the Rick Phelps books, he had a pretty obvious type, and Jack fit that type pretty perfectly. Lord, Bitty may as well be renting out a billboard that said “Hey Jack Zimmermann, you’re hot!”

But Jack wouldn’t read the whole thing, right? He had better things to do. Writing a thesis and captaining the team to victory and all that. He’d read a chapter, then drop it. He was stubborn, but not stubborn enough to get through 300 pages of something that wasn’t that good. And everything would be fine! Maybe he’d read the Wikipedia summary to save face, but that was fine, too.

“Bitty?” Jack asked, knocking on the open door’s frame. “I have a question.”

“Shoot,” Bitty said, swiveling around in his desk chair. He geared up to argue about an unscheduled early morning practice or to explain one more time the difference between Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry (Jack finally could identify Beyoncé from five seconds or less of a song).

“Can we, uh, make the seven layer bar recipe from chapter 13? They sound really good, but… I mean, you saw the way the oven burned my taquitos last week.” Jack looked at Bitty hopefully.

“You’re at chapter 13?” Bitty asked, shocked.

“I’m on chapter 16 now, but the chapter 13 recipe sounds the best.”

“You’re reading the recipes, too?”Bitty’s heart stopped.

“I mean, they’re in there for a reason. What if there was a clue hidden in the recipe and I missed it by not reading through the whole thing?” Jack said earnestly. Bitty’s hand twitched– he wanted to write that down right now, his editor would love something like that. Maybe something in the notes, or in the numbers of the measurements– oh, it could be a beautiful thing–

“It’s a good book,” Jack said unprompted. “Bradley is kind of an asshole, though. Hope Joe doesn’t end up with him.”

“Bradley is perfectly nice!” Bitty protested. “He helps Joe out.”

“If he really wanted to help him solve all these murders, he’d do something more than just blindly encourage him. He’d get him an online detective class or something. What if Joe contaminates the crime scene on accident, gets flour everywhere maybe, and a murderer goes free?” Jack demanded. Of course Jack Zimmermann, who works harder than god and takes shinny seriously, would take issue with that. The whole point of the genre was that the protagonist wasn’t a trained detective, in Bitty’s opinion! It was more fun and relatable that way.

“This isn’t that kind of book.”

“It could be. Joe could go to prison for interfering with an investigation in the next one. He won’t be able to bake much if he’s a prisoner.” 

“You can’t have a cozy mystery in prison!” Bitty protested. “Besides, Drew helps Joe with knowing how to investigate responsibly.” He would go on, but he saw Jack’s lip twitch with a smile.

“Oh, I see, now you’re chirping me. Well, Mr. Zimmermann, what did you think of the Pierre Laurent book?” Bitty looked at Jack expectantly. Jack seemed to turn his words over carefully in his head before answering.

“Are we talking about the books individually, or comparing the books, or comparing the authors?” he asked eventually. Bitty shrugged.

“Little bit of all of those?”

“Okay. Uh, well, Phelps is obviously more prolific. It’s been a few years since Laurent’s book came out, and no sequel, but there are already three of the baking mysteries out, with more to come. And Phelps has to test a ton of recipes, too. He might be the only person baking more than you, Bittle,”Jack chirped. Bitty laughed it off, hoping that none of the boys would notice if the new maple-apple muffins he was working on ended up in the next book. Shoot. Jack was definitely the kind of person who finished every series he started.

“Laurent… you can tell it’s a debut novel. Good research. I don’t know that the relationship is as strong as it could be,” Jack said.

“It’s perfectly strong. They’re in long ago times, they can’t exactly end the book with a proposal scene,” Bitty said. Jack shrugged.

“Laurent could’ve done more without escalating to a proposal. Could’ve had Theodore and Daniel ride off into the sunset together, instead of just implying heavily that they’ll meet again. Researched more same-sex couples of the time period and how they lived, based it off of them. A solid start. He’ll probably improve if he keeps writing.”

Bitty startled at that a bit. **_If_**? **_If_** he keeps writing? Who the hell would write like that and just stop?

“He’s gotta keep writing,” Bitty finally said. “I have to know what happens next. And I’m not alone.”

Jack shrugged. “Plenty of people only have one book in them,” he said.

This… did not make any sense to Bitty. He thought briefly of the six outlines sitting on his hard drive, with external backups on three extra drives and printed copies sitting in a safe in his parents’ spare room. His life was spent procrastinating on homework with baking, procrastinating on baking with book writing, and procrastinating on book writing with homework. It was a delicate balance, but the important thing was that he was always thinking of new things.

“Well. Laurent had better have a second book in him,” Bitty said finally. “I like his writing.”

Jack shrugged, then looked back to the Rick Phelps book.

“So, about those seven-layer bars…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY so Bitty is basically writing the Joanne Fluke books, but like, my impression of the books from skimming a chapter here or there when my mom would bring them back from the library. 
> 
> Also, here's the cookie recipe I mentioned: http://recipesofgarrettsquared.blogspot.com/2014/09/butter-scotchies.html


	3. Holster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, Holster never thought there was any chance one of his books would come up in Book Club.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone want some Holsom pining?

Holster wasn’t the kind of person who you’d expect to be able to keep a secret for more than ten minutes. But there were some things that you wanted to keep quiet even when you were a loudmouth.

Alex Rose wrote short, funny books about whatever nonfiction topic seemed to be gripping him at any one time. All under 150 pages, all filled with his signature annotated pictures and diagrams, all hilarious. _The Unofficial History of Cheers_. _The Unofficial History of 30 Rock_. _The Real Story of Buffalo Wings._ _Personal Econ Tricks for Millennials Who Don’t Like Avocado And Don’t Buy A Latte Every Day_. It was like Mary Roach had a shorter attention span and an obsession with sitcoms. Perfect books to give as a gift or flip through on an airplane, not _too_ deep but deep enough to be interesting.

He could write about one every two months, including research. Publishing and revision took longer, of course, but the first drafts at least were fast. It was a nice break from econ homework. He’d open a beer, relax, and spend a few hours reading about his newest subject instead of stressing about school. Honestly, he was prolific. He was blindsided when Ransom suggested they read one of his books.

“Look, I’m getting sick of talking to dudes at the gay bar and being treated like a straight guy just because I don’t watch this one TV show,” Ransom said, pulling three copies of Alex Rose’s _Unofficial Guide to Only The Important Parts of RuPaul’s Drag Race_ out of his bag.

“That sounds like an exaggeration,” Bitty said. Ransom shook his head.

“Literally, I was grinding with him, we went to the bar to get drinks, and he started asking me who I was rooting for in Drag Race. And who my all-time favorite was. Then when I was like, no, sorry, I don’t watch that, could we talk about something else, he totally lost interest and I didn’t get laid that night,” he said. “So this will be educational, but like actually more useful than most educational books.”

“Because it’ll get you laid?” Bitty asked, looking over the back of the book.

“Exactly. Maybe it’ll get all of us laid,” Ransom answered. He handed Holster his copy. “This dude is super readable, too, so we can read it and study for midterms at the same time. And it’ll be faster than watching a million seasons of a TV show.”

“Totally,” Holster said easily, frantically scanning his memory to see if he’d accidentally included any identifying information in the book. He was a conversational writer, after all, and maybe he occasionally talked about how he was in love with his roommate slash best friend slash defense partner. This book was probably safe, right? He might’ve said something about his friends from high school drama club, the biggest fans of Drag Race he knew, but there’s be no reason to talk about his jock friends in the drag book, right? Well, there had been that one time when Lardo had used some glitter on Ransom’s cheekbones for a photography project about challenging the expectations of makeup use in society. That time that Holster thought about at least once a week. God, he just looked so fucking good. He probably hadn’t found an organic way to work it into the book. Probably. His editor wouldn’t let him get away with that. Probably.

“Why would you want to sleep with someone who’s so judgy about the TV you watch?” Bitty asked, flipping through the first few pages. It had been easy to get to the target page count on this one, since he could include annotated pictures of the queens’ looks– multiple pictures even for queens like Trixie Mattel, to go into detail on the makeup looks.

“Because this dude was _hot_ , Bitty. He looked like he was majoring in ab workouts with a minor in squats,” Ransom said with a careful blend of exasperation and patience. “And it had been fucking forever since I got laid. I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend, I was looking for one good night.”

Curse the foolish men of the Samwell gay bars, Holster thought. What kind of fucking moron would look at Justin Fucking Oluransi, decked out in a carefully chosen outfit designed to show off all of his muscles, not to mention his truly glorious ass, and have the gall to make conversation about TV instead of hooking up?

Admittedly Holster was also a moron who usually talked about TV with Ransom instead of hooking up, but he had reasons for being that kind of moron. Friendship and roommate-ship and teammate-ship and shit. These bar dudes had no excuse.

Bitty, rolling his eyes as he flipped through the heavily illustrated pages, was clearly having a similar thought process to Holster about the fools of the bars.

“I still think that particular guy was probably just a dick,” he said. “But I am relieved that it’s something that won’t take all my brainpower. French is gonna destroy my GPA.”

Holster privately felt like Bitty should have just dropped French after the first week of struggling to figure out what letters were pronounced and which were just decorative. At this point it felt like he was trying to prove something with it. Holster had no idea what it could possibly be, but he wasn’t going to stop.

“Okay, so next to pick is Bitty,” Holster said, grasping at anything that’d let him stop thinking about how much he wished that Ransom had picked literally any other author.

***

“Allison! How are you doing?” Holster said into the phone as he walked alone across campus (he’d checked behind him several times to make sure no teammates were in hearing range).

“What’s the crisis?” his editor said flatly.

“Can’t I call my bookish best friend, my literary rock, my–”

“Cut the crap, Adam. Your next deadline is in two months, do you already need an extension?”

Holster took a deep breath.

“In the Drag Race book, did I say anything about hockey or maybe how I have a big crush on a certain teammate?”

Allison was quiet for what felt like forty-five minutes but was probably more like fifteen seconds. Holster focused on a group of five squirrels chasing each other up a tree, breathing deeply to try and calm down.

“A weirder issue than usual, but I’m glad I don’t have to explain to my boss why you’re delayed. I think we cut the paragraph you wrote in the chapter on makeup and gender roles? The one about how your boyfriend looks good with glitter?”

“Not my boyfriend. So did we cut it or not?” He could hear the tap of Tina’s keyboard in the background.

“Um, looks like… Okay, we cut it down from a paragraph to a couple sentences. Now it’s just ‘Gender roles are bullshit, and if you still seriously think that makeup is just for women I recommend you consider what some glitter can do. I’ve seen how this sparkly stuff can take a man’s glorious cheekbones from swoon-worthy to inducing actual swooning.’ Please tell me that whatever’s happening isn’t going to delay the draft for _The Unofficial Guide to the Office_ , we need a gift book for people to give their boring friends.”

“I promise you, Allison, this will be the perfect book for everyone with a deeply uncreative Tinder bio,” Holster said, trying to figure out how badly he should be panicking. “What page is that one on?”

“Bottom of 98,” she said. “But it’s easy to skip over. We ended up putting your rant as a footnote across the page from the Trixie Mattel diagram. Seriously, I don’t think it’s in any way identifying.”

“I don’t want him to know,” Holster said, his voice small. “He doesn’t see me that way, and, and– I can’t lose him. He’s my best friend.”

Allison sighed on the other end of the line.

“I know, kid. It’s tough. But if he’s half as oblivious as you, he wouldn’t suspect a thing from this book. Just keep him away from the _30 Rock_ one, you’ve got some strong opinions in there that nobody else on earth has.”

“Yeah, but I’m _right_ , it can fit into the universe of _Flight of the Conchords_ – you’re right, nobody on earth agrees with me.”

***

“I’m sorry, y’all, I just looked at the pictures, I didn’t read the actual words,” Bitty admitted as they sat down for a meeting of the book club. “Jack kept telling me I couldn’t fail my French midterm without bringing dishonor to the team, and by the time we were done with flashcards, I just couldn’t process anything in any language.”

Ransom and Holster exchanged a glance. Bitty’s crush was, to put it mildly, more obvious than a billboard (to everyone except Jack). And his French skills were, to put it mildly, worse than anyone else on earth’s French skills (especially obvious to Jack). Honestly, Holster didn’t know if there were enough flashcards in the world to help Bitty’s grade.

“How’d you do on the midterm?” Ransom asked cautiously. Bitty perked up a little.

“C+! Solidly a passing grade,” he said proudly. They briefly exchanged a round of high-fives.

“My organic chem midterm kept me from reading the whole book, too,” Ransom said. “I skipped all the footnotes.”

“Lord, you’re the only person on earth who thinks skipping footnotes is the same thing as not finishing a book,” Bitty complained. He kept talking, but all Holster could process was the sheer relief of Ransom skipping the footnotes.

“Holster? Bro? Bro, what did you think of the book?” Ransom was waving his hand in front of Holster’s face. He shook himself back to awareness.

“It was good!” he said, even though in his opinion it couldn’t hold a candle to his _Unofficial Guide to The Bachelor_. “But the important thing, bro, is the question that made you pick this one out in the first place: will this knowledge get you laid?”

Ransom grinned. “Bro, totally. My favorite queen is Katya, and no, I cannot say her last name.”

Holster high-fived him again. His heart broke a little bit more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: Ransom's book. 
> 
> Also, if your tinder bio says that your hobby is watching The Office, you know already that's the most boring bio you could possibly have. Revise it in 2020 to show that you're an interesting person. You're more than a TV show that went off the air 7 years ago. I stand by this.


	4. Ransom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holster picks Ransom's book for book club.

Ransom was fucking awesome at being an older brother, okay? Really fucking awesome. He never yelled at Amanda, never got jealous of all the attention his adorable baby sister got, never. He taught her how to skate and throw a punch and cook s’mores. And he told her stories. Sometimes he’d read them out of a book, but what she wanted to hear were _his_ stories. Really fucking awesome stories, about whatever she asked for. If she wanted to hear about cowgirls, he told her about the bravest cowgirls in history. If she wanted to hear about witches, he told her about the cleverest possible witches. If she wanted to hear about princesses (and she wanted to hear about princesses a lot, who could blame her), he told her about the coolest princess in all of Toronto, and her adventures navigating the most difficult kind of diplomacy: high school.

In turn, Amanda was fucking awesome at being a younger sister. She knew when Ransom was too stressed from studying to play, she gave him the best hugs, and she listened with rapt attention to every single story. So when she begged him to write down the stories so she could read them even when she was at her grade school and Justin was at high school, there was no way Justin could say no to her.

And because he’d read her _The School Story_ , by Andrew Clements, when she’d asked about where books came from and how they were made, she took the stories, printed them out, and mailed them in a manilla envelope to an agent she found online. She handled all the negotiations, right up until the time when editing needed to begin. Then she printed it out again, and dumped it in front of Justin on his desk.

“What is this?” he’d asked.

“It’s your book. Your deadline is August fifth, your editor’s name is Marie Smith, and you can’t tell anyone I forged your signature on the contract. Here’s your advance check,” she’d said matter-of-factly, slipping the check onto the top of the manuscript. Justin looked at the number and his eyes widened.

“Amanda, what did you do?”

“Look, you’re more worried about college and med school than a fifteen-year old should be, and I’m ten, so I can’t get a job to help you,” she explained. “But I can convince grownups that I’m not a ten-year old if I do everything by email, and get you a job that you’re good at.”

“I’m not a writer! I’m getting a B- in English,” Justin protested. Literally his worst grade.

“Yeah, cause you don’t study enough for English, you only study for math and science. You tell me good stories! Don’t you think the girls out there who don’t have good brothers to tell them stories deserve to hear them?” She put her hands on her hips and gave him her sternest stare. The pink glitter T-shirt took away from the effect a bit, but Justin knew he couldn’t argue with her.

“You’re going to end up being a lawyer,” he complained, flipping open the manuscript to see the first notes from the editor. They were… all very fair and perfectly phrased to not trip up his anxiety. It wasn’t like being told he was bad, it was like when his coaches told him how to be even better.

“I don’t know, Amanda,” he said. “I don’t think most girls want to read a dude’s take on how high school goes for girls.”

“Make up a name, then,” she said. “Like J.K. Rowling.”

“J.K. Oluransi?” Justin asked. Amanda rolled her eyes, then paused.

“J. Ranser?” she asked. “Use your hockey name instead of your real one?”

“Maybe.” Justin looked at the manuscript again. “You really think anyone else wants to read about a royal high schooler who’s royally neurotic?”

“Are you kidding me? I got you an agent, and a contract, and you keep… you keep _freaking_ questioning whether you’re good enough?” Amanda demanded.

“Language!” Mrs. Oluransi yelled from somewhere deep in the house. Justin still didn’t know how she knew these things.

“Fine,” Justin said. “You’re right, as always.”

“Yes,” Amanda said. “I am.”

***

Justin was at home from Samwell his freshman year, working on the outline for book three of _The Duchess Journals_ , when Amanda came into his room and sat on the floor. She sat with her knees drawn to her chest, arms wrapped around her legs.

“What’s up?” Justin asked. He was trying to plot out the third act– Amy was being torn between Jacob, the hottest guy in school, and Mike, her BFF’s brother, as well as trying to make sure that her kingdom was being responsible in its trade deals with Canada (some people in the olive oil industry were making it tough). Typical teenage problems. The big question was Jacob or Mike, but if he could tie _that_ solution in with the diplomacy problem, that would be perfect.

“I want to talk about Princess Amy,” Amanda said. “I have an idea for this book.”

“I’m all ears,” Justin said, turning away from the enormous corkboard covered in dozens of notecards. It would all be transferred to Excel later, and then written out in Word, but he did like being a little analog at the very start.

“What if Princess Amy didn’t end up with Jacob or Mike,” she said, taking a deep breath. Justin waited. “What if she ended up with Tina instead?”

Justin paused for a second, taking in his sister’s face, her posture. Her eyes were trained on him, unblinking as she waited for his reaction.

“I think that’s a great idea,” he said, trying to keep his voice from being too loud or too soft. “The chemistry with Jacob felt kind of forced in the last one, anyways. And I like Tina a lot. It’d be nice to write more of her.”

Amanda laughed a little, more a sound of relief than amusement. She closed her eyes.

“I’m guessing you aren’t just talking about fictional characters?” Justin asked. Amanda shook her head.

“I like girls,” she said, her voice almost too soft to hear. “I like boys, too, but… I thought I wanted to be this girl’s best friend. And I did, but then I realized that I kind of wanted to be her girlfriend even more, and I’ve just been trying to find the right way to tell someone–”

“Hey, hey, take a breath,” Justin said, pulling Amanda into a hug. “Thanks for trusting me.”

“I’m bi,” she said, her voice muffled in his shoulder. “I’m bi and I can say it out loud.” Justin let go of her.

“Hell yeah, you can say it out loud!” he said. “Oh!” He jumped across the room to his backpack and rummaged around in it for what was probably twenty seconds but felt like an hour. Triumphant, he held the tiny thing he’d found over his head.

“Here! We just had Pride in Samwell a few weeks ago, I got an extra button from the Bi Bikers of Boston,” he explained, pressing it into Amanda’s palm. He and Holster had a solo cup in their room that was full to the brim of buttons, some pink-purple-blue, some rainbow, all from Samwell Pride. They’d lost track of who’d gotten which, so this was the fair solution.

“Why were you talking to the Bi Bikers of Boston?” she asked, looking down at the pin. It was the Best Buy logo, but instead declared “Best Bi” in bold black on yellow. A 1” button. Not too big, not too small.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to buy a motorcycle, my profs have told me too many horror stories from when they worked in the E.R.,” Justin said. He shuddered. Doctors and nurses did not hold back on details that they maybe should hold back on. “I try to hit up all the bi booths. Solidarity, you know?”

“Wait, are you bi?” Amanda demanded. Justin furrowed his brow.

“Yes? You know I was the secretary of the gay-straight alliance in high school, right? And I mean, I go to Samwell, one in four, maybe more,” Justin said, a little confused. Amanda was pacing the room now.

“The GSA is definitely not in your senior yearbook!”

“Oh, it wouldn’t be, I dropped to just being a member in every club where I wasn’t president so I could focus on hockey and college applications,” he said. “And I was in the middle of book 2 edits, so that was taking a lot of my time.”

She rolled her eyes. “This would have been good information for me to have, Justin!” She stopped pacing to look at the corkboard. After about twenty seconds, she plucked a notecard off and looked closer.

“The fucking olive oil minister again?” she asked. Justin shrugged.

“He’s fun to write. I don’t know why he’s trying to undermine Amy all the time, but it’s fun to do a villain like that.” He straightened up and grinned at a realization. “Oh man, if I make Tina the main love interest, I get to write Lars again!”

Lars was Tina’s bodyguard. She and Amy had initially bonded over being the only kids in school whose parents made them have bodyguards, but that had become a more genuine friendship over time. He could see it now, the relationship intensifying over the school year- oh, maybe Tina and Amy could be put together on a group project and end up spending way more time with each other-

Amanda was looking at the rest of Justin’s desk area. She’d picked up the framed Samwell Men’s Hockey picture he kept there, and the smaller one of just him and Holster.

“So are you and Holster… an item?” Amanda asked. Justin’s smile faded almost imperceptibly.

“No. Just best bros,” he said, falsely cheerful. Amanda narrowed her eyes. She could always see through him.

“Bullshit.”

“Seriously. He doesn’t see me that way,” Justin said, saying the truth instead of one of the better lies, instead of _We don’t see each other that way_ or _I don’t see him that way_ or anything else that would let him keep some of his pride intact. Amanda pursed her lips.

“If you say so,” she said.

“It’s the way it is,” Justin insisted.

***

Ransom did not expect this book when it was Holster’s turn to pick for book club.

“We’ve been reading too many dude books,” he explained as he passed out the hot pink books. “And I know we aren’t exactly the target audience, but my cousin Bella could barely put them down at the family reunion, and I know she’s fourteen but she has excellent taste.”

It hadn’t really occurred to him that this was even a possibility. They’d stayed so firmly outside of the YA section so far, and literally nobody he knew in real life besides Amanda had ever even tried to read them.

He should just say something. It’s not like this was supposed to be his dirty secret for the rest of his life.

But.

But there were a couple voices at the back of his mind, holding him back.

One, this was a private thing, as private as a mass-market paperback could be. It was a labor of love, something he knew his sister needed and wanted.

Two, it’s not like he based Amy and Tina’s chemistry directly on himself and Holster, but, well, writing comes from experience a lot of the time, and what more intense experience of being in love with a best friend did he have? And if Holster figured that out, well. He didn't want to think about how mad he'd be about this secret. Not that Holster ever got really mad at him, unless he was trying to stay in the library past 1AM or something. Still, the fear was there, lurking at the back of his throat and blocking the words. 

He wasn’t going to say anything.

***

“Y’all, can we just talk about Tina and Amy for a minute? I just love that trope where the best friends fall in love,” Bitty said, holding _The Duchess Journals Book Three: Royal Pains_. “But I did read the summaries of the first two books online, and apparently in those two, Amy is straighter than an arrow, fussing over those two boys, and this all came out of nowhere.”

“The author probably could’ve included some foreshadowing,” Holster agreed. “I mean, I appreciate that they went for it, but I don’t know if this was an afterthought or not.”

Ransom had promised himself that he would keep quiet. He didn’t want to share this, this sacred secret he shared with Amanda, but there are some things you can’t keep quiet about. He stared at the cover, bubblegum pink with an embossed crown sitting on a little pillow. At his pen name on the bottom. He cleared his throat.

“I think the author managed to show something really real,” he said, shoving the defensiveness out of his voice. “Not everybody grows up all Lady Gaga Born This Way. Sometimes you figure out who you are a little later, and that’s just as important a story to tell.”

Bitty raised an eyebrow.

“Seriously,” Ransom insisted. “It was really easy for me to be like, ‘okay, I like girls, so I’m straight,’ and then I didn’t examine it any closer for a while. I know gay rep isn’t always the best in media, but bi rep is so rare that I didn’t really know it was possible until I had a crush on a guy that I couldn’t ignore anymore. And I think that’s what’s going on with Princess Amy here.” He took a deep breath, praying that he hadn’t said enough to make them suspect that he was the real author.

Bitty tilted his head, considering.

“I can see that,” he said.

“Yeah,” Holster agreed. “Love is confusing. Especially when you’re friends. So what did you think about the olive oil guy? He was such a dick to her!”

“Agreed!” Bitty said. Ransom let them talk to each other for a moment as he internally sighed in relief. His secret was safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the longest chapter so far, but I think it has the least amount of actual book club? Anyway I thought "I bet Ransom could write a really great neurotic character. My favorite great neurotic character is Mia in the Princess Diaries" and went from there. 
> 
> Next up: Dex. Dext up? No, that's dumb.


	5. Dex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things Dex would rather do than hear his friends talk about his writing:  
> -Crawl out the window over the kitchen sink  
> -Lie down behind the drier until people forget he was ever there  
> -Basically literally anything?

Dex kept his writing under wraps because there was no way any hockey player would believe that he of all people was a romance writer. Shirtless dudes on the cover and everything. There was also no way that any hockey player would read his book. So he thought, at least.

Fucking Queer Bro Book Club. Fucking Samwell hockey players. He would’ve happily traded his residual check from those three copies to never hear his friends talk about how he wrote about dicks.

“So Jason Burns is definitely a virgin, yeah?” Ransom asked.

“How on earth can you tell that from the first three chapters?” Bitty demanded.

“Doesn’t talk about the dicks. Just like, the feelings,” Ransom said. “Like, their hearts are on fire for each other and the sight of their lips is intoxicating or whatever, but what about the boners?”

“Maybe there’ll be a sex scene later on.”

“I feel like there’s just gonna be, like, even more intense hand-holding,” Holster said. “More emotional boners than real ones.”

Dex considered, briefly, how difficult it would be to transfer to a school on Antarctica. Or the moon. Volunteering to be one of the first people on Mars, maybe. Faking his own death. They didn’t know that he wrote as Jason Burns, but he could tell that he was already so red from eavesdropping that he’d be suspicious if he left the kitchen to go to the living room. The window over the kitchen sink would be impossible to crawl out of without breaking a few dishes, so he was considering slinking into the basement and going out through the window down there when Nursey, thankfully not a member of the book club, entered the kitchen.

“Dude, are you okay? You’re, like, super red. Like a freckly tomato,” he said, looking over Dex’s face with a frown. “You’ve got, like, the most sensitive white person skin on the planet. Are you sunburnt or overheated, or?”

“Probably just overheated,” Dex said, grateful for the excuse. He started pulling off a flannel. Thank god he was always wearing an extra flannel. “Unless the SPF 50 is failing me.”

“You wear SPF 50 every day? Not just for going to the beach and shit?”

“Gotta wear it or the skin cancer will get in there with the freckles. Do you not wear sunscreen every day? Darker skin is more at risk for serious skin cancer because it’s tougher to detect, you need to be careful,” Dex said, redirecting the conversation into an argument. He’d gotten better over time at arguing with his friends about things that made it clear he cared.

“EMOTIONAL BONERS STILL COUNT AS ROMANCE,” Bitty yelled in the other room.

“Is that their weird little book club?” Nursey asked.

“It’s not weird, bro!” Ransom yelled.

“Are you jealous?” Holster added. “Because you can join if you want to!”

“Sounds fun, but I have to read and write essays about four other novels before Thursday.” Nursey dropped his backpack with an audible thunk to make the point. “So I’ll have to pass on the emotional boners for now.”

Well. That was one small mercy– one less person on the team reading it meant one less person speculating about his love life, or lack thereof.

“Wait, wait, Nursey!” Holster called. “Can you just, like, English major analyze this paragraph and tell us if this dude has ever boned down?”

“Probably not, but I’ll give it a shot,” Nursey said skeptically. Holster jumped up so he was standing between the kitchen and the living room, cleared his throat, and started reading out loud, dramatically enough that Dex tried to will his molecules to melt into a puddle.

_“You’re the only one I can trust here,” Patrick said softly. Mark looked away, the raw emotion on Patrick’s face too much to bear. It was too soft, too tender. He was afraid he’d ruin it if he looked too hard._

_“I think more people like you than you think,” Mark managed to say. Slowly, cautiously, Patrick reached out one hand to grab Mark’s in his own._

_“Liking is different from trusting,” Patrick whispered. “I think I’d trust you with anything and everything, if you’d let me.”_

_Mark’s heart leapt in his chest at that– it could mean– but it couldn’t–_

_Before he could say anything or overthink anymore, Patrick’s lips were on his and his brain wasn’t working anymore._

Holster snapped the book shut with that and looked at Nursey expectantly.

“So?” Ransom asked. “Does this dude even know how sex works?”

“I mean, I don’t know?” Nursey said. “It didn’t sound that bad to me. Plus, you know, it’s kind of bullshit when people say to write what you know. Could’ve done research before he started writing. If the author is even a he– loads of romance writers use pseudonyms. Could be a woman.”

“Well, I guess you’re the pseudonym expert here,” Holster said reluctantly. “I still think they should just bang.”

“I wish he’d just say dick,” Ransom added. “Just say they’re mad horny for each other and get to it. ‘They were mad horny and then they started boning.’ There, that’s a less ambiguous fade to black right there.”

“Y’all have no sense of romance whatsoever,” Bitty said. “The book is sweet! And there’s still four chapters left!”

“Is the dryer still fucky? I think it needs some work,” Dex said loudly, before dashing down the basement stairs and throwing up in the utility sink.

He groaned. Not subtle, Poindexter. Maybe it’d seem like normal awkwardness. Hopefully he had established himself as enough of a dork that it didn’t matter. He stuck his head under the sink to rinse the taste of vomit out of his mouth, then started rotating the faucet to rinse out the sink.

“Dude, are you okay?” Nursey asked from behind him, making Dex jump. He hadn’t heard the footsteps over the sound of the water. “You don’t need to lie about the dryer if you need to barf. They’d let you use the bathroom.”

Dex closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“I just needed to not be up there for a minute,” he said carefully.

“Why?” He opened his eyes to see Nursey looking at him warily. “Is this some issue with the Queer Bro Book Club, or–”

“Nurse, I asked you like twelve times if my favorite background dudes in your book could be a couple until you agreed to put it into the next book, do you really think this is a no homo situation?” Dex asked. He paused. “Actually, this is maybe something I should’ve brought up when you told me you’re Duke Errens.”

Nursey looked, if possible, more apprehensive. “What is it?” he asked carefully.

“So. Uh. I may also be a published author,” Dex said, avoiding eye contact.

“Why wouldn’t you tell me before?” Nursey’s tone was somewhere between indignant and confused.

“Because my book isn’t a cool book about demon hunters that everyone loves,” Dex said, intently inspecting his own shoelaces. “My book would get me chirped to hell and back, if anyone read it. But it’s niche, so there’s no way anyone would read it, because the niche is not a niche that hockey players like–”

“Stop saying ‘niche’ and just say what your book is–”

“It’s the book they’re reading,” Dex blurted out. “I wrote a gay romance book and they’re reading it andit’s making me remember why I never read the GoodReads reviews of my book.”

Nursey blinked.

He blinked again.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “Well, uh. Shit. That was an uncomfortable conversation in retrospect.”

“Really, was it?” Dex demanded, sarcastic and hysterical. “It’s _uncomfortable_ to have all your friends trying to figure out if you’ve fucked or not?”

“Hey, I’m the only one who even remotely knows what it feels like, chill,” Nursey said. “Okay. Well, we can’t stay in the Haus. D-man study sesh at Annie’s. You can get a peppermint or a ginger tea and that’ll help your stomach. And I’ll get something with at least four shots of espresso because this is a situation that demands more energy.”

“Or I could curl up behind the dryer like a possum and die,” Dex countered. “And then I never have to deal with this.”

“I mean, yeah, it’s an option, but my idea involves snacks and that sounds a lot more fun.” Nursey raised his eyebrows at Dex. “Besides, you know you’re the only one who’d clean up a mummy from behind the dryer. We’d just leave you there because we’re afraid to break the dryer more. Your spirit would have to haunt the basement forever.”

“Fine. I won’t do that.”

“And then I’m gonna order your book and read it.”

“No.”

“Can’t stop me, Dexy. Fair is fair, you read all my shit.”

“No, I mean, don’t buy it that way because I get like a quarter if you buy it online. I’ve got like four advance reader copies in a box in my dorm, I’ll trade you one for a week of coffee.”

“Deal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT UP: Chowder! His book is titled "500 Ways to Cook Soups, Stews, and Chowders" (that is a lie. the chapter is written and it is not that)


	6. Chowder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chowder did not go to the same lengths as his friends did to hide his books. But he wasn't exactly looking to advertise it to the Samwell Men's Hockey team- not after the nicknames he got when his high school team learned about his books.

Chowder had thought about just using his full, legal, real name for a while. It was a good name, he liked it a lot, but the problem was that it wasn’t an uncommon name. There were already 287 other Chris Chows on LinkedIn, and that wasn’t even counting the screenwriter Chris Chow, who already wrote 5 movies and had one made by Jet Li. That was a lot of pressure. They wouldn’t be writing in the same genre, but it was still enough to make him reconsider using his first name.

Plus, a secret identity was kind of fun to have.

Even if it was just his initials.

He wasn’t actually secretive about it. He wanted to keep his family name front and center– that was important. C.F. Chow was more google-able, easy to sign quickly, and let him separate work and personal life. He didn’t need people looking to friend him on facebook to pull up pictures of blood-spattered book covers instead.

He got it, okay? People don’t expect cheerful people to write about murder. Or to even think about murder. If you write about violent crime, you’re supposed to do it over a glass of some kind of gross brown hard liquor with a frown on your face the whole time, not coffee with milk and sugar. It’s not like he was grinning the whole time he wrote, of course, but it’s an interesting topic! It’s okay to have some fascination mixed in with disgust when you hear about death, especially in a murder mystery. Feelings like that are totally normal, and not everyone who reads or writes thrillers is trying to murder someone.

The puzzle aspect of the mysteries was the most fun part of writing them. Researching unusual ways for people to die, then constructing the red herrings and the false clues, putting it all together so the reader had a fair chance to solve it on their own without making it too easy– it was the best kind of challenge. Finding ways to throw off his detective characters was the best. It didn’t seem realistic to him when crime-solving was easy on TV or in other books, so he always wanted to throw in some extraneous details. In real life, things were complicated, so why not in his story?

And, okay, yeah, it was fun to make the story terrifying. It was a thriller, you were supposed to get that thrill of excitement and terror as you read! If people didn’t like them, he wouldn’t be publishing them.

He had the first two books in his debut series published, with a third on the way and a fourth starting to take shape in his drafts. The series starred a detective based on his cousin, an actual detective, solving crimes in the Bay Area with her girlfriend. His author bio was brief, and didn’t have a picture. He’d wait to add one in until after his braces were finally off, and not a moment before.

He was a little surprised to see Ransom, Holster, and Bitty all sitting in the kitchen with three shiny hardcover copies of his first book when he visited after practice. It wasn’t like he’d said anything to the team about it. Not after his high school team found out and called him Murder Chris instead of Chris C. for a month. He kind of suspected that Chris U. was behind that whole thing. Not that Samwell would be like that! There were zero vengeful Other Chrises on this team. But still, he was hesitant.

“Does C. F. Chow have a twitter?” Bitty asked, turning a page without taking his eyes off the book. “I need him to know it’s his fault if I flunk this French test from staying up all night.”

“Bits, bro, we all know you wouldn’t study for French anyways,” Holster said, not unkindly. “Not when Jack’s out of town and unavailable to run flashcards for hours.”

“Can we take a break after we all reach chapter 11?” Ransom asked. “I think I haven’t blinked since Kathy got on the motorcycle and started chasing that guy.”

“I don’t think I’ve blinked since Liz got kidnapped in the first place,” Bitty said.

Chowder quietly turned into the living room. So they weren’t reading it to be supportive, or because they found him out, they were just reading it to read it. That was… new. Not bad, but it was a surprise. Nursey, sitting on the floor and leaning against the couch, waved at him without looking up from his book.

“What’s going on in there?” Chowder asked quietly. It felt like a sudden noise might make any of the three in the kitchen start screaming.

“Queer bro book club,” Nursey said. “They found another book with some lesbians, cause they’ve been leaning kind of dude-heavy in the non-YA books so far, but it’s scaring them shitless, so they’re reading it together during daylight and then locking the books in the freezer at night. I think it’s based on a real serial killer and that’s what’s got them freaked out. Dex tried to tell them that it was probably more scary than the real thing, but Holster threw half a sandwich at him and yelled something about it being against the bylaws to interrupt a player while he’s reading, which I don’t think is an actual bylaw? But he still had a milkshake in his other hand, and I felt like if I challenged him, he’d just throw that at me, and I don’t trust the washer to get milkshake out of my sweaters, so we let it go.”

Well. It _was_ based on a real case, but Chowder didn’t think it would be comforting for anyone to know that he’d actually toned _down_ some of the creepier elements of the real story. He’d grown up in the Bay Area- there were a lot of local serial killers for him to learn about.

Yeah, definitely not a fact to share with those three.

“When are they going to give up on the fucking book club?” Dex muttered. Nursey tossed a pen at his head. “I’m serious, they’re monopolizing the kitchen more than Bitty normally monopolizes the kitchen!” Dex continued. “I wanted to meal prep today and I can’t because they’re all jumping at the slightest noise. They’d probably scream if I got out a chef’s knife.”

Chowder glanced at the door to the kitchen and back at the other frogs.

“Uh, can I talk to you guys about something?” he said. “But maybe not right here?”

“Of course,” Dex said. “I need some Annie’s anyways.”

“Don’t tell us you’re secretly the author of that book?” Nursey joked, already putting his books away. Chowder froze.

“Oh shit,” Dex said, staring at Chowder. Nursey looked up and saw his expression.

“Oh. Shit, indeed,” he said.

“What I’m trying to understand is this: why didn’t either of you tell me this when you learned that I’m an author?” Nursey complained, the to-go lid barely keeping his latte from spilling as he gesticulated. He was lounging in one of Annie’s most cushioned armchairs, legs draped over one arm and his laptop precariously sitting on his somach. “Literally it would’ve made so much sense to tell me then.”

“People get weird and snobby about romance, and I didn’t want to risk it,” Dex explained. “Besides, you’re on like, the NYT booklist and I barely got a print run. Most of my sales are digital.”

“People get weird and mean about mysteries based on true crime, and I didn’t want to be called Murder Chris again,” Chowder explained. Nursey snorted.

“One, that’s a dumb fucking nickname, your team could’ve bullied you more creatively. Like, not that they should’ve done that at all, but they could’ve come up with something better. Killer Chris would sound better, alliteration is always better. Two, come on! I’m writing fantasy, people are weird and snobby and mean about my genre all the time.” He took a bite from his cookie, about the same diameter as his face, and kept talking through the crumbs. “But anyways. Moving on. How is this fucking book club finding your books?”

“That’s the real mystery,” Dex said. His eyebrows were pulled tight enough together that they could’ve been a unibrow. “Do they know, or is this the worst case of coincidence in the history of coincidences?” He tried to take a dramatic swig of his tea, but choked on it a little bit. Nursey smacked him on the back while he coughed.

“I think,” Chowder said slowly over Dex’s wheezes, “that we need to do some investigating.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: Not another author, but a chapter of shenanigans and poorly done investigating!  
> also: yes I did do some googling to get the numbers of real Chris Chows out there


	7. The Frogs Investigate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Frogs interrogate the book club in hopes of finding out how on earth they'd found all of their books.

The Frogs were totally going to be subtle about their investigation.

(They were totally not going to be subtle about their investigation.)

Dex’s assigned target was Ransom. Even though Dex had agreed to the plan, and talked it over with the other Frogs for hours in Annie’s, and then over text all night, and then through a series of snapchats after realizing that texts could create a paper trail, he didn’t really have any of the specific details locked down. Details like “what do you say to _subtly_ interrogate a friend?” and “how do you _not_ let people you’re interrogating know that you’re interrogating them?” The only detail he felt confident about was that it would be easiest to get Ransom alone for questioning if they met at the library for a study session. Ransom was usually down for a study sesh, and it was easy enough to find a time when Holster was busy with class.

“How’s your book club going?” he asked, keeping his voice down even though they were in the group discussion area of the library, and thus allowed to speak at a normal volume. It still felt wrong to not whisper in the library. Ransom shrugged.

“Going fine, I guess. Reading way more fiction books than I normally would during the school year, which is probably good for me. Hard to start a conversation about my textbooks, you know?”

“I tried to tell Bitty what my homework was and he said he had to go lie down with a headache,” Dex admitted. He basically talked about hockey with his teammates and computer stuff with his study buddies, and had learned quickly to not cross contaminate the subjects. 

“Reminds me of when I was studying for organic chem in the kitchen last year. He left for like three hours. Way more tweets than I’d expect if he actually had a headache, but a social media break is close enough to a nap for him.”

“So you’re not getting the books from a specific list or anything?” Dex asked, barreling on through. If Nursey or Chowder had been there, he would haveprobably let them take the lead and be a little more subtle about the whole thing. As an investigator, he was more of a sledgehammer than a set of pliers. But Ransom didn’t seem to notice anything.

“Nah, limiting ourselves like that would suck. Like if a swawesome book came out in the middle of the year, but we’d been stuck with a list from January? Fuck that, bro. It’s better to change with the vibes. The kind of book we pick at the start of the year can’t be the same as a midterms book.”

“Like your lecture on kegster music,” Dex said. Ransom nodded emphatically.

“Yes! Just like you can’t just throw a playlist on _shuffle_ ,” he said, disgust dripping from the last word. “Seriously, who does that? You can’t go from like ‘Low’ by T-Pain to ’Somebody to Love’ by Queen and keep the party going smoothly. It just doesn’t work.” 

Dex just kept nodding as Ransom continued to complain about the one kegster where they let Shitty have control of the playlist two years ago, his mind racing. It couldn’t be random, but it also wasn’t being orchestrated by Ransom. The dude didn’t have the poker face to hide something like this. It had to be Holster or Bitty.

Nursey had Holster. Frankly, he figured Holster would be the easiest to get some answers out of, and also he knew that if things went wrong, he could just say “Liz Lemon should’ve married Alec Baldwin at the end of 30 Rock” or “The sitcom is a dying television format and should go away forever” or “Buffalo wings suck and boneless wings are the best, they aren’t chicken nuggets, they’re boneless wings” and the conversation would be over. He’d be stuck in a longer, worse conversation, but it would be a _different_ conversation at least.

“What’s next up for your book club?” he asked from the disgusting couch. Holster looked up from his homework, slightly relieved at the distraction.

“I think Bits is up next for picking something out, but we needed a break after the last one so we’re taking a week off,” he explained. He stared into the distance for a second and shivered. Nursey couldn’t tell if it was a genuine reaction or for dramatic effect. “I think we have to go a lot lighter for this next one. Rans and I keep ending up sleeping in the same bed when we get nightmares.”

Nursey noted that in a mental file labeled “Holster and Ransom: Very Close Bros or Very Bro-y Boyfriends?” and moved on.

“Any ideas of where he’s going to find it? I’ve been looking for something to read outside of class and you guys seem to find an interesting mix.”

“Oh, I just go to the library and find a librarian with at least five piercings and unnaturally dyed hair and ask for the best gay book they’ve read lately. 100% success rate,” Holster said. “If they’ve got a rainbow pin somewhere that counts as three piercings.” He’d switched into the same tone he used as when he advised the Freshmen on his ideal ratio of vodka to Gatorade for kegsters.

(“It’s called the Fibonacci Drink Sequence, and it guarantees that you will never, ever have a hangover, but that you’ll also have the ideal level of being sloshed. Each unit is equivalent in volume. One Gatorade, one booze, two booze, three Gatorade, five booze, eight booze, thirteen Gatorade, twenty one booze, and so on. If you throw up or stop remembering the math, your night is over. And I _cannot_ emphasize this enough: if you drink yellow or green Gatorade, I will personally get you expelled from Samwell.”)

Nursey considered. He knew the library well enough to know that there were at least ten librarians who fit that description, so the odds of it being one all-knowing librarian (Johnson’s relative?) were low. And it didn’t seem like Holster was lying. He reserved that tone of voice for trying to pass on whatever he considered Upperclassman Wisdom.

Chowder went after Bitty in the kitchen.

“So,” he said, totally normally and definitely not nervously, “how did you find the books you’ve picked for your book club?”

Bitty wiped away some sweat from his brow. Strawberry jam sat on the stove, bubbling away. Apparently the jam from the store wasn’t good enough for _someone’s_ pregame PB&J habit. At this point, Chowder couldn’t tell if Bitty and Jack were dating and keeping it quiet or if Jack was really that oblivious to Bitty’s crush. He leaned toward the latter.

“Actually, the goalie before you, Johnson, he sent me this list of books that he said were must-reads for people on the SMH,” Bitty said. “Now, I know we say that all goalies are weird but Chowder, believe you me, he was on a whole ‘nother level. Made your puck fear seem like the most common attitude in the world. But I think he was majoring in literature? That or physics. Maybe both. Or neither. Anyways, that’s where I look, and so far they’ve been winners. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, well,” Chowder said as he came up with a lie, “Me and Dex and Nursey might try to do a book club, but I was worried about trying to find good books, since there are so many out there.”

“My frogs are growing up,” Bitty said fondly. “I’m so proud that those two aren’t fighting all the time anymore. I’ll forward that list to you in a bit. Maybe y’all can help me come up with a good recipe for book club cookies. I think chocolate chip with walnut is my favorite so far, but I’m just not sure if it’s the perfect book club cookie since so many people are allergic to nuts, and if the chocolate gets melty you might get it on the pages and we just can’t have that. What do you think about lemon bars?”

“Lemon bars are good,” Chowder said, trying to think of a subtle way to ask “Did you figure out that my pen name is basically my real name, or is it all some bizarre coincidence?” and failing to find the wording. Words were easier when revision was an option.

“Good! Oh my aunt Judy has a lemon curd recipe that would be a perfect addition…” Bitty continued, but Chowder had pulled out his phone.

From: Chowder

To: Frog Squad

the mystery continues :( meet at annies in 30 min?

“That was a colossal failure,” Dex said, sounding more bitter than anyone holding a cup of hot chocolate with two inches of whipped cream had any right to be. His scowl continued even as he sipped. Nursey shrugged.

“I mean, Holster’s tactic for finding books sounds decent tbh.”

“Nurse, if you say another acronym out loud–”

“Wtf Poindexter, I thought we were special author pals now?”

Dex rolled his eyes and opened his mout to say something, but was interrupted by Chowder dropping loudly into the seat next to him.

“It was Johnson.”

“Who?”

“The goalie before me. He gave Bitty a list of books and all of ours are on there.” The defensemen were, for once in their lives, shocked into silence for a full six seconds.

“How the actual literal fuck did he know?” Nursey demanded.

“No idea.”

“Okay but seriously. Was he some kind of hacker? Is this a weird joke?” Dex asked.

“Bitty has no clue, and I couldn’t press the issue any more,” Chowder said. “So. It’s a mystery?”

“No,” Dex said, standing up suddenly and almost spilling his hot chocolate. I know how to get answers.

“So, uh… why do you need a Special Captain Meeting?” Jack asked the Frogs, who had hurled themselves into his room and claimed his desk chair, the actual desk, and the rug in front of the bed as seats. “Is there some kind of conflict, or…?”

“Something’s going on with that book club,” Dex said bluntly.

“Oh.” Jack said, starting to sweat.

“I’m actually kind of pissed that I’m not the only secret author on the team,” said Nursey.

Jack froze.

“How did you find out it was my book?” he said, his voice suddenly much smaller, completely out of captain mode.

“ _Your_ book?”

“We were talking about _our_ books.”

“What the fuck, what the _fuck_ , what _the_ –”

Their spiral halted immediately when Jack stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled the insanely loud universal camp counselor / youth sports coach whistle that means _I’m in charge and you need to shut up right now._

“Show me the list,” he said. Chowder immediately handed over his phone. Jack skimmed the list and tapped the screen.

“There it is, I wrote that one,” he said. “Pierre Laurent. Obviously fake name, I know. Which ones did you all write?”

Dex and Chowder shared a raised eyebrow at the _you all_ but they each dutifully explained their books to Jack.

“There are nine books on the list. What are the odds that four of them would be on the same team?” Nursey asked. Jack’s brow stayed furrowed.

“And it’s from Johnson?” he asked, then continued after a round of nods, “Hm. Great goalie. Terrible at replying to emails. I’ll ask him if he’s got an explanation, but he’ll probably respond to me in six months and say that he was hiking the Appalachian Trail without his phone or something.”

This was honestly the most Jack had spoken to the Frogs outside of practice. The three watched as Jack frowned and furrowed his brows. Chowder privately wondered if you can furrow anything besides your brows, but snapped out of that line of thought when Jack started talking again.

“These other authors. You don’t think…? No. That would be beyond unlikely.”

Dex instantly knew what Jack was saying.

“We research the rest of them and compare them to other teammates. Jack, can you get us a roster from the past couple years? I have to think that people who graduated already might be on the list,” he asked. Jack nodded. “Chowder, what other books have they read on this list?”

“The baking one, the drag one, the princess one,” he started, ticking them off on his hands as he went. “Um, I think that’s it, unless they had a summer meeting I didn’t hear about.”

“He’s right,” Jack said. “I, uh. Read the baking one.”

“That one has to be Bitty,” Nursey said. “Isn’t there a recipe at the end of every chapter? He’s gotta be testing recipes for his next one.”

“Impossible,” Jack said quickly. “He didn’t even like reading it.” Dex looked at Chowder, saw that he wasn’t going to say anything, and started talking.

“I hate reading my own stuff after it’s published, since you can’t change things anymore. And hearing what other people think of it is even worse. Maybe that’s what was going on with Bitty?” Jack was already shaking his head.

“This was more than just being self-critical. He even said that some of the recipes were bad. Bittle would never share a recipe he wasn’t totally sure about.” That, at least, seemed like a pretty solid argument.

“Okay. We’ll downgrade that from certain to a maybe,” Nursey said.

“Is this a good idea?” Chowder said. “I didn’t want anyone to know about my book. None of us wanted this kind of attention. Why should we push this? If they did write these, and they wanted us to know, we’d know.”

The other three fell silent.

“He’s right,” Dex said with a frown. “We’d be hypocrites.”

The four sat in silence for a few minutes. The Frogs exchanged uncertain glances with each other, while Jack started pacing.

“Okay,” he finally said. “I really don’t think Bitty wrote the baking one. I can’t see anyone on our team writing the princess book.”

“The drag one seems unlikely, too. I’ve never seen any reality TV on in the Haus, just sitcoms, sports, and video games,” Chowder added. “So we won’t waste our time trying to figure out a mystery that isn’t actually here.”

“Yeah, we can just… let it go. If we see anything super obvious, we can let each other know, but in the meantime, we can just keep this all quiet,” Nursey said.

“And let’s all promise to not read each others’ books,” Dex interjected. “Just. I want to keep my writing friends and my hockey friends separate.”

“All your writing friends are middle-aged ladies in the romance community—”

“— Just because your writing friends don’t mail you cookies when you have a book launch doesn’t mean you get to be jealous, and anyways—”

“Okay. Sounds like a plan. Good meeting. Uh, good teamwork, thank you for coming to me with this problem,” Jack said, shutting down the bickering before it could intensify. “Now please get out of my room. Thank you.”

The frogs filed out, leaving Jack alone with his thoughts.

He shouldn’t pry.

He shouldn’t ask Bitty.

And yet. Who else could have written a book with recipes that good?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've still got 4 main chapters and at least one epilogue to go!  
> Lardo is up next :)


	8. Lardo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The book club, shockingly, gets ahold of Lardo's book. The penguin illustration is only my third watercolor ever so please just imagine that illustration, but done by someone who knows how to like draw backgrounds and stuff. Also imagine I had access to a scanner (may reupload if I can get to one actually).

Lardo’s professional illustration career started when her aunt Michelle was complaining about how tough it was to find a good illustrator for the picture book she was making. Michelle needed an artist, Lardo needed a new project, it all worked out perfectly.

Rissa Nguyen drew charming watercolor pictures of bunnies and elephants and owls and whatever other creatures her aunt wanted to write about. She used her mom’s maiden name (and her aunt’s last name) for anonymity and so there’d be no confusion about whether to shelve things by author or illustrator, and shortened her first name a little. The publisher had seen her portfolio, and had delicately suggested that maybe parents wouldn’t want quite as many pictures of (tastefully) painted boobs to pop up when they googled the cute bunny artist. It was kind of bullshit, but she wanted the money. She planned on still adding links to the books on her website once she graduated, for the sake of having a complete portfolio but this… this worked. It wasn’t like she was getting huge residuals or advances, but it was enough that she didn’t have to take another on-campus job outside of hockey season. She was better at collaboration in some of her classes than the people without this kind of experience. It was a good thing for her.

It was okay money, but still not her best art, especially the earlier books. She was getting better every year, of course, with each book published having a more distinctive and polished look to it. But still. Not the kind of art she really wanted to share at Samwell. Sometimes the art department seemed like it was an elaborate contest to discover who could make the most money on the least “commercial” art possible. The Samwell professors and students were the kinds of art people who were torn between wanting to sell a lot of paintings and make enough money to retire to the south of France, and the desire to make art so pure and devoid of commercialism that nobody in their right mind would ever buy it. One person in her mixed media class had put together a piece made of used makeup remover cotton rounds, which, having not been dried out properly, quickly mildewed. The professor added points for the “dynamic” nature of the mildew creeping over the piece and triggering a few mild asthma attacks among the class. That person had called Lardo’s piece with the bedazzled jock strap “derivative.” What on earth could that be derived from?

She could never have predicted that a single person on the team would ever read the books. Her target age group was 4-8, for crying out loud. Maybe in five or ten years when someone had a baby, when she was hopefully selling out galleries and able to turn all of the books into funny stories, but now?

“Finals are destroying me, y’all, and I can’t read a real book,” Bitty announced, pulling three of Michelle and Rissa Nguyen’s latest book out from his messenger bag. “I just want to pretend it’s the Scholastic book fair and have this whole meeting take less than an hour, reading included. It’s cute, two boy penguins hatch and raise an abandoned egg and they’re just a lovely little penguin family.”

From where she was studying at the kitchen table, Lardo froze as soon as she heard Bitty describe the story. It had to be a different gay penguin book. There were about three floating around. Two out of three odds it wasn’t hers. She wasn’t about to risk looking over and seeming overly interested. It was fine. Totally no big deal.

“Fuck yeah, gay penguins,” Holster said, flipping to the first page. “To be honest, I was gonna just sparknotes whatever the next book was. This is way easier.”

“Bro, can you imagine sparknotes for a picture book?” Ransom asked. “Aw, the dad penguins have matching scarves.”

Nope, she was the only one who’d given the penguins scarves. Aunt Michelle had been hoping to get a licensing deal for stuffed animals with this one, and they’d agreed that a penguin with a scarf would sell better than a plain penguin. More distinctive, even if it would cost a little more in production. An incredibly obvious sign to her art department friends that she was going to end up being a total sellout. Penguins designed to sell toys were basically the opposite of High Art for Art’s Sake, or whatever her Sculptural Design III professor had said in the first lecture.

They flipped through the pictures fairly quickly, occasionally pausing for Ransom and Holster to try to persuade Bitty that he should’ve brought fun shaped erasers or bookmarks with pictures of kittens on them for the full Scholastic Book Fair experience.

“Y’all have credit cards and internet access, find your own bookmarks and erasers,” Bitty said.

“It’s not the same if you aren’t paying with a crumpled ten dollar bill,” Ransom insisted.

“Yeah, Bitty, it has to be the full experience,” Holster added.

“Ideally you would’ve had us step out of a lecture for it, you gotta miss some class to go to the book fair.” Bitty rolled his eyes.

“You can skip class if you want, but I’m not organizing that. Getting back on topic for a second, what did y’all think? I think the art is really cute and I’m probably going to buy some of their other books for my cousin’s baby,” he said. Ransom and Holster nodded.

They hadn’t caught on, Lardo realized.

“Yeah, I did a quick Google and saw the one with the baby lion learning to roar, I think I’ll suggest it to my sister for her classroom,” Holster said. “Preschoolers love animals that could kill them in real life, I guess.”

“Do you think a penguin could kill a preschooler?” Ransom asked thoughtfully. “I feel like it depends on what kind of penguin it is.”

“Yeah, an emperor penguin could probably fuck up a kid pretty bad,” Holster said. “Maybe not a rockhopper. Depends on how tough the kid is, too. A weak kid could get their ass kicked by any penguin.”

“Are y’all just secret penguin experts? This is a weirdly specific discussion,” Bitty said.

“Bitty, bro, we need to do a field trip. The three of us, the New England Aquarium. It’s right over in Boston.”

“You’re a fucking genius, that’s the energy we need,” Holster said, jumping up. “We can’t have book fair energy but we can have _FIELD TRIP_ energy!”

“Oh lord,” Bitty laughed. “Wait, like right now?”

“No time like the present! Come on, dude, you never get any studying done on Saturday anyways. Let’s go look at some penguins and maybe buy Chowder another shark plushie. Ooh, maybe they’ll have some cool pens or something, we can live our book fair dreams out a little bit.”

The three of them jumped up, laughing and chirping each other as they ran around the Haus to grab their coats, keys, and wallets.

“Hey, Lardo, want to come with us to the aquarium?” Bitty asked as he ducked into the kitchen to make sure there wasn’t anything in the oven.

“Nah, I have a paper due in my History of Chocolate class at midnight. I thought it would be the easiest way to fill that gen ed credit, but it’s kicking my ass.”

“Darn,” Bitty said with an exaggerated pout. “We’ll take pictures of any really weird fish we see and send them to you, I promise.”

“Sweet,” Lardo said.

Okay. They hadn’t noticed any similarity between the book and her current art, which was the goal. She didn’t have to explain herself.

How much longer would she be able to hide it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up we have Shitty!


	9. Shitty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The book club gets to Shitty's book, featuring some forbidden Wonderland romances.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay look: I started this before we knew what Shitty's real name was, and I didn't want to rewrite the chapter. So just add this to the list of reasons why this is an au.

The Samwell Men’s Hockey Team would’ve probably understood Shitty’s tense relationship with his parents a little more if they knew his first name, and how he got that name.

Bishop Rook Knight was born to two competitive chess players who cared more about making everything in their life themed around their passion than about giving their baby a normal name. In amongst the more standard teddy bears and blankets, he had a plethora of stuffed queens, knights, kings, and bishops. His parents didn’t give him Candyland, they gave him a chessboard and gently scolded him when he tried to play pretend that the horsey was alive. He teethed on one favorite Queen, from the plainest plastic set in his parents’ collection. Bishop was a perfectly normal, happy, healthy baby, which meant he was doomed to be a disapointment for not being a true prodigy.

“The knight doesn’t move like that, honey,” his mom would say. “Do the L shape, okay, sweetie?”

“Guard the king,” his dad would say. “You’re leaving him vulnerable if you start chewing on the pawns.”

They had similar opinions on the books that Bishop was allowed to read. Of course all books were encouraged, to improve his critical thinking and verbal processing, but his childhood bookshelf held a higher percentage of books on the history of chess than the average child. And of course, the most important fictional use of chess, Alice in Wonderland. Bishop’s parents would flip quickly past the Queen of Hearts (card games were not something they wanted to encourage), and focus on the Red Queen and the White Queen. Bishop didn’t even learn about the White Rabbit or the Blue Caterpillar or Unbirthdays until he was old enough to read on his own. Alice had seemed like a weird side character who didn’t belong in the chess game. He felt like that version of Alice a lot, a piece in a game where he didn’t want to play.

When he got older, of course, Bishop rebelled. He tried to make a nickname of “Shippy” a thing, using hockey nickname rules on the last syllable of his first name, but the older kids at Andover did what asshole older kids do and started calling him Shitty. Honestly, it was better this way. He dropped out of chess club as soon as he could. It wasn’t fun at this point, anyways. He wasn’t a prodigy, but with enough brute force learning from his parents, he was a master. When he beat the other kids, he felt bad because he was way better than them. When he let them win, he felt bad because they all knew that he was making mistakes on purpose. So hockey it was. A sport with the exact opposite vibes of chess, with lots of shouting and swearing and physicality. His parents despised it, and he was finally happy.

One thing that pissed off Shitty’s parents more than anything else was adaptations of Alice in Wonderland that didn’t adequately address the importance of the chess pieces. At this point in his life, anything that pissed off his parents was a plus in his book.

So he wrote a book focused entirely on the playing cards. It wasn’t super popular, but he did get a niche following online because of the way he wrote the romantic tension between the King of Hearts and the Jack of Spades. It was an unexpected forbidden romance, but it was a fun read nonetheless. It had sold just well enough to warrant publishing a sequel, and gave him just enough money that he could stop playing in chess tournaments on the weekends for cash that didn’t leave him in his parents’ debt. He focused this on the Red Queen and the White Queen, enemies who were secretly slowly falling for each other. This adaptation was designed to annoy his parents even more, since he changed almost everything and made the two opposing sides unite in solidarity against the greater tyrant in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter. Honestly he was really proud of how he’d turned the Mad Hatter into the main villain, especially the imagery of the crown made of hundreds of hats bound together with silver and gold. Of course, there was still a significant amount of actual chess theory in there, too. He couldn’t completely lose his love of the game, no matter how hard he tried.

“So we can all agree, this is the fakest author name I’ve ever seen in my life?” Holster announced, holding Bishop Rook’s second book up at book club. “Like we get it, dude, you’re writing a book about the White Queen, you like chess.” Bitty nodded in agreement.

“Definitely. A fun book, but I had to keep Googling chess words. Probably would’ve been easier if I’d been in chess club in high school or something.”

“I _was_ in chess club in high school and I still had to keep Googling,” Ransom said. “Like. This shit is really fucking advanced. I don’t know if we’re the target audience, or if it’s more aimed at literal grandmasters of chess.”

 _These dumb fuckers haven’t even looked at the team roster on the website_ , Shitty thought to himself as he eavesdropped from the kitchen. He had some issues with his name, but it was incredibly findable information. Right there on the Samwell Athletics website, next to his weight and height and jersey number, his full name, Bishop Rook Knight. He’d left Knight off of his author name, because he was feeling particularly pissed off at his dad when he’d had that conversation with his agent. But still. It wasn’t that big of a secret. Just the kind of thing where he didn’t really want to get into it. When people learned about the tournaments he’d won when he was younger, they always challenged him to a game, and he always beat them so quickly that they felt bad about themselves, and that made Shitty feel bad, and it was just all around not worth it.

Lardo walked in and dumped her backpack on the floor. She glanced into the living room to see what was going on, then did a double-take at the book.

“Isn’t that your book,” she said in an almost silent whisper to Shitty.

“How did you—”

“Dude. I’ve booked flights for you. I print out official rosters like twice a week. I know your fucking legal name,” she said. “Besides, I Googled all of you when I started, since I didn’t want to be surprised if anyone else ended up with a famous hockey dad who I’d never heard of.”

“You never said anything,” Shitty whispered. With the volume Holster had in the other room, they probably could’ve shouted and not been overheard, but he was cautious here.

“Let’s just say that I can understand why someone would want to maybe not advertise that they’ve written a book,” she said. “So I didn’t pry.” He wasn’t going to ask if she didn’t offer.

“It’s not like it’s the deepest darkest secret. People just get weird when you’re really good at stuff like this,” he explained, even though she hadn’t asked. “And it’s basically my real name on the cover. Which I hate.”

“Your secret’s safe,” she said, more firmly. “Half this team couldn’t find their ass in the dark with two hands, a map, and a flashlight. They won’t figure it out.”

“Jesus F Christ, that was folksy. You’ve been spending too much time with Bitty.”

She punched him in the arm, and he relaxed. In the back of his mind, though, he wondered: Would it be that bad if everyone found out?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up, we have-- what's this? It's John Johnson, the Metaphysical Goalie, coming in with a route to some story resolution!


	10. John Johnson, the Metaphysical Goalie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What's this? Some mail, sent to every single person in the Haus? A short and sweet chapter to link the main story with the denouement?

Greetings, Author!

John Johnson, here. I was the best goalie on the Samwell team until Chowder entered the narrative? If you’re having trouble remembering my face, think as generic as possible. Like a contestant on The Bachelorette who gets eliminated early. It’s not that important. I’m writing to see if you’re willing to do an old teammate a favor. After Samwell, I got a job at BookCon. It’s a great job where I can use all the nonspecific skills I gained in my nonspecific major at Samwell, and where I can hopefully resolve this whole storyline. Don’t worry about that, I don’t even know why I say stuff like that.

We wanted to put together a panel for authors who use pseudonyms to tell readers about the many different reasons they can have for not using the same name they use in everyday life. Now, I know and you know that you publish under a pseudonym. The narrative required me to know this, you know? Otherwise we’d keep going in circles, one person learning at a time, just so slow. This will be a great chance to promote your next book. I’m sure your agent and publisher would love that, and would maybe stop hassling you about getting in that next draft. How do I know about that? I just do. I mean, it’s a lucky guess. Yes. I totally don’t have special insight into the larger narrative here.

Your game will be cancelled that day, so don’t even worry about the potential schedule conflict. If you really want, you can tell the coaches that your cousin or whatever is getting married, but that’s not really necessary. You’ll be on the panel with seven other authors, nine people on the panel in total counting you and our moderator. Of course, we’ll keep all of you in separate areas until the panel begins, since we don’t want to ruin the surprise for anyone.

This will be a great networking event, too. And plenty of your fans will be there, I promise. Even people who adore your most obscure work. But we won’t make you do any kinds of signings or anything. Just this one panel (unless you see anything on the schedule that you do want to participate in! But you probably won’t, and that will happen outside of the main narrative. A throwaway line at best.)

Anyways, I’ll see you soon enough. There will be a special check-in station for our VIPs, and I’ll get you your badge and wristband. No need to RSVP, I already know you’ll be here. See you in New York! It will be so easy to get a train ticket, but I recommend that as soon as you get on the train you put on sunglasses and a baseball cap and also read. You can maybe eat a snack, but don’t look at literally any of the other passengers, okay?

Love you, I mean,

Your most metaphysical goalie,

John Johnson, Assistant Director of Programming, BookCon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I make no promises on when or how the next chapter will happen, but it's partially written and features some resolution :)

**Author's Note:**

> I know myself enough to not promise a release schedule. But I've written the next chapter!


End file.
